Scott Ainslie's BluesNotes
Second in a series of articles relating to the Blues
R. F. Thompson
From the introduction to Robert Farris Thompson's brilliant, "Flash of the Spirit":
"Listening to rock, jazz, blues, reggae, salsa, samba, boss nova, juju, highlife, and mambo, one might conclude that much of the popular music of the world is informed by the flash of the spirit of a certain people specially armed with improvisatory drive and brilliance.
"Since the Atlantic slave trade, ancient AFrican organizing principles of song and dance have crossed the seas from the Old World to the New. There they took on momentum, intermingling with each other and with New World or European styles of singing and dance. Among those principles are
- the dominance of a percussive performance style (attack and vital aliveness in sound and motion);
- a propensity for multiple meter (competing meters sounding all at once);
- overlapping call and response in singing (solo/chorus, voice/instrument---"interlock systems" of performance);
- inner pulse control (the "metronome sense," keeping a beat indelibly in mind as a rhythmic common denominator in a welter of different meters);
- suspended accentuation patterning (offbeat phrasing of melodic and choreographic accents); and, at a slightly different but equally recurrent level of exposition,
- songs and dances of social allusion (music which, however danceable and 'swinging,' remorselessly contrasts social imperfections against implied criteria for perfect living)."
I will be writing about some of the ideas put forward in this wonderful book in coming installments of Blues Notes. I think hope you will find these interesting from both musical and social perspectives.